It may not be necessary to drag in religion and bureaucracy to identify what went wrong with classical (?) music in the twentieth century.  Meredith Willson pinned it very neatly in his “And There I Stood with My Piccolo” many years ago.  The problem is that composers quit writing for real-world audiences and started writing to impress critics and each other.  As William Henry Vanderbilt is so often quoted out of context: “The public be damned!”

The works written to one-up the in-crowd may be interesting indeed as intellectual excercises aimed at those with the esoteric knowledge to appreciate them, but they lack the tonal and rhythmic qualities necessary to appeal to homo sapiens’ simian nature.  I.e. they don’t appeal to our visceral as oppposed to purely cerebral senses.  Indeed they can be visceral turn-offs.  the philistine audience who rebelled at the premiere of Stravinsky’s “Sacre du Printemps” had a legitimate beef.  And I once felt good about walking out on Bernstein’s “Kaddish Symphony” even though Mrs. Bernstein herself was doing the vocal.

Sousa had the right idea when he remarked that he tried to write music that would make a man with a wooden leg want to march.

I like sounds, for we were spoken into existence afterall.

Howard Hanson comes to mind as an example of decent post-war music.

He composed from around 1920 into the late seventies. But it’s true that as a composer his career probably peaked at or before the fateful year of 1945, when he was elevated (quarantined?) to the realm of academia and government patronage.

What about competition? Jazz was really starting to take off in the 30’s and 40’s. Rock and roll followed shortly thereafter. The growth of radio and TV expanded the kinds of music to which people could listen dramatically.

“What about competition? Jazz was really starting to take off in the 30’s and 40’s. Rock and roll followed shortly thereafter. The growth of radio and TV expanded the kinds of music to which people could listen dramatically.”

I don’t think jazz and rock were direct competitors to classical music at that time. Then, even more so than now, appreciation of and exposure to classical music was an indicator of social class and education.

My point is that I don’t think jazz and rock on the radio siphoned off too many old fuddy-duddies or proletarian Beethoven lovers.

Interesting how in the arts the Neos and the Paleos are carbon copies. I wonder if for The New Criterion

1. serious music (a better name than “classical") is assumed to be 95% from 1750-1911, with Bruckner ignored (or considered inferior to Mahler), Haydn acknowledged rarely, and the only pre 1750 composer acknowledged is Bach.  Thus the the Anglo-American taste from 1950:  Protestant, Romantic, and the German connection begrudgingly acknowledged.

2. Webern, Messiaen, Reich, and Adams don’t exist.

3.  the Early Music revival didn’t happen.  Josquin, Monteverdi, Pérotin, Dufay, Corelli, and chant are “academic”.  Palestrina and Victoria are played only to show folks what music sounded like back then.

4. American serious music tastes are imported from Britain (even in Early Music)

Maybe Mr. Stove’s book improves on this.

Let me pose a question at the end of this fascinating essay: if indeed it was “unlimited taxpayer funding” and the consequent government control that was the actual culprit in the decline, how then do we explain the history of what we call “classical music,” which has enjoyed the largesse of both governments (kings and kaisers, in particulary) as well as substantial patronage from individual sponsors since certainly the late middle ages and Renaissance? I would certainly agree that a incestuous relationship, at least since 1945, has had negative consequenses. But shouldn’t we also emphasize the fact that the self-appointed (and faceless, mostly) bureaucrats in charge of “cultural” agencies for the past 60 years have a philosophy that is markedly different from, say, a Prince Eszterhazy or Lobkowicz, and that commissions from, for example, a king of Prussia or Naples, were much more in line with traditional tastes and practice?  Royal favor was important to 18th and 19th century composers, but the emphasis and direction, even among royal bureaucracies, was much more in line with popular tastes and traditions.

I would also like to read what Mr. Stove has to say about the “Saturday night massacre” of broadcast Classical music in the 1960s, when the major networks in the USA removed all classical music programming from commercial media, including the NBC support for the Met Opera, the NY Phil, the cancelling of the Bell Telephone Hour and the Voice of Firestone, etc. Previously, at least to some degree, classical music was not completely identified in the public mind as “elistist,” but with its migration to PBS and “educational” niche media, such an impression was solidified in the public mind, it seems to me.

Finally, I’d be interested in Mr. Stove’s view of Norman Lebrecht’s ideas on the decline.

Again, fascinating and thought-provoking essay, which I greatly enjoyed reading.

Thank you Sid, for pithily making some points I wanted to see made. Just a coupla others:

1. Boulez’s remark about Marxism-Leninism (actually I read it in the form “I am 100% Stalinist!") refers not to politics but to his ideological approach to music history. Ditto the comment about blowing up opera houses (he’s conducted in more than a few, himself). He has a penchant for making outrageous remarks, which should not be taken seriously.

2. As a listener who’s mostly interested in jazz & classical from after the dreaded 1945 cutoff date, I take issue with the claim that modern music clears out concert halls. At most of the modernist concerts I’ve been too, the hall was full - and what’s more, with lots of YOUNG people. This is essential if “classical” (however defined) is to have any future audience.

Atonality is like "sophistry" in language. Sophistry can be defined as inventing (through sheer verbal artistry, the metaphor-construction tools of language) distinctions where none exist and/or erasing distinctions which indeed do.
Pretending that the components of an abstraction (the 12 tones of the chromatic scale) whose myriad "enharmonic" connections form the basis of tonal expression can in and of themselves reveal any musical expression is as absurd as assuming that the 26 letters of the English alphabet (or, at best, the 42 phonemes used in Enlish) are "imbued with" any semantics and pretending that sentences like…
tend pre th com ing pone of an trac abs
...can be meaningful. It is charlatanism of the worst kind. Yet it somehow stuck.
And all this because of the idiotic romantic metaphor of going back to "nature," to the "natural" or "unalienated" man whose mind has not been corrupted (?) by the "bourgeois" culture. What nonsense.
Those who want to enjoy the great fruits of living as the "natural" man (whatever "unnatural" man means, as if anything by definition against nature --  such as humans flying by flapping their arms of water flowing upwards—could exist under the sun) can try the fellows in the jungles of Borneo. I’m sure they have their even more natural trio-phonic serialism.
BTW Mr. Stove, any ideas on Bartok? I happen to have my roots in the Balkans, and he did a lot gathering the folk material of the region to build a unique "modal" harmony (although I confess his music contains too many "modernist" influences").

As a professional musician and monarchist, I’d like to heartily second Dr. Cathey’s excellent comments.  The problem is not government support--without which the arts have never flourished and never will flourish--but the kind of government and the kind of support!

While it’s true that in the modern era state subsidies have played a role in propping up the modernism I dislike, in an era when the music I love and with which I earn my living is so easily drowned out by pop culture, I’m not willing to trust the free market.

Thomas Jefferson, in arguing for the virginia Statute of Religious Liberty, made the point that subsidy of the Anglican clergy by the state had made them more attentive to their emoluments than to their duties. Anyone familiar with 18th-c. Anglicanism knows this is all too true.

Subsidy of the arts by government has had an analogous result. When a museum or a symphony orchestra is dependent on grants from government, or (what is almost the same thing) from tax-exempt foundations, it need not pay much attention to its duties to the admission-paying public.

My late father attended the University of Minnesota in the years before World War II. While there he had a job as an usher at concerts of what was then called the Minneapolis Symphony, which then perfomed at Northrup Auditorium on the university campus. I think he did it mostly because it was a cheap way to get to hear the orchestra! The Minneapolis Symphony at the time had an eminent conductor in Dimitri Mitroupoulos, and recording contracts with Columbia. It was at its artistic peak - and it was entirely privately funded at the time.

Dad died nine years ago, and I recall him observing more than once that the decline of what is now called the Minnesota Orchestra from its pre-war pinnacle was the inevitable consequence of its increased reliance on grants and subsidies.

To Dr. Cathey’s point above, I concur that monarchs (and of course the church) were great patrons of the arts and of music throughout most of the era that gave us our ‘classical’ repertoire. However there is a great difference between a patron like Haydn’s Prince Esterhazy, or the great Roman cardinals who so encouraged the development of the oratorio in the days of Stradella and Alessandro Scarlatti, and an “arts board” that recommends government grants today. The former were aristocrats, connoisseurs of highly developed tastes, who could afford any luxury and often did. The latter, I suspect, are often people whose tastes enter less into their decisions than do political factors. There is an old joke that a giraffe is a horse designed by committee. The way government subsidy now works, we are getting art and music to the design of committees.

I won’t contest the importance of classical music throughout history and the inestimable service it provided humanity.  However music must evolve. 

Classical music fit in with the political and social endeavors of the day.  Explorers in great and far off lands sailing the high seas, revolution, enlightenment.  But the themes that inspired classical music are no more.  Can you imagine a piece called the “September Eleventh Overture”?  Classical music cannot possibly give justice to the overwhelming sense of universal catastrophe and impending doom that much of the younger generations feel.  A requiem mass just won’t cut it.  On the other hand take the exploding guitar sounds of Hendrix’s 12 minute anti-war epic “Machine Gun” (I can count three key changes - and all spontaneous mind you, nothing written down.)

The rise of Jazz in the 30s brought to light the wonders of improvisational music: Louis Armstrong’s hot five and hot seven recordings.  Bop Jazz of the 40s, 50s raised that style to incredible new heights.  Take for example Art Blakey’s 1954 performance at Birdland, or the Miles Davis Quintet album “Relaxin”.

The listener will notice a more spiritual and bluesy tone to Jazz artists of the 60s.  For example, take John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”, Charlie Mingus’ “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” or my personal favorite: Cannonball Adderley Quintet “Country Preacher” (The trumpet solo on “Hummin” is supreme.)

As everyone knows, around this same time period was the San Fransisco acid wave of the upper sixties.  Which gave rise to artists like The Grateful Dead.  Now before you go denouncing me as some nutball acid freak can you count the key changes in the longest versions of “Dark Star”?  Jerry Garcia was not just the leader of the dead heads.  He was an extremely talented bluegrass musician, having played early on with Bill Monroe and David Grisman.  Phil Lesh was a classically trained trumpet player.  The complexity of some Dead tunes might even make Mozart blush.

Nonetheless MTV, VH1, BET and other members of the alphabet soup group have ruined music of all genres.  It’s not longer an art, it’s a capitalist endeavor for the vein and shallow. I agree that Classical, Jazz, and true Blues Rock have been strangled by commercialism.

1. B makes an important observation.  With the coming of “music television” all music has stopped development.  In “hot” media, or at least electronic media, the visual drives out the auditory. TV culture is amusical. Americans are an unmusical people.  My impression is that the Italians are now the same.  Not so the Middle Europeans!

2. Boyd Cathey is quite correct.  The Archduke trio wasn’t paid for by the democratic State.  Democracy, as Cooper and Tocqueville observed long ago, drifts toward the mediocre, at best. “Serious” music has always been for an elite—an elite that anyone can join if he will.

3. Let me take something from the gent from Istanbul and run with it. for 500 years Western music, of all sorts, has had just 12 notes.  One wonders if we have done all we can do with those notes.  One would think that with the capacity to play deep notes down to 20hz with a computerized synthesizer, and then using the overtone series, new notes could be developed.  Just a thought.

I’d like to develop a few thoughts that have been running through my head since reading Mr. Stove’s excellent essay. As a boy I remember spending a lot of time at my grandparents’ home, where an old 78rpm record playert occupied pride of place. My grandparents were solidly middle class, good, church-going Southerners. But like most folks of their ilk they had a modicum of appreciation for serious or classical music. I inherited a number of old 78s, including Tchaikowsky serenade and some arias sung by Amelita Galli-Curci from them. On Saturday afternoons the large, stand alone Bendix radio would be tuned to the NBC affiliate in Raleigh (WPTF---there weren’t but two, maybe three radio stations in the city at that time) for the Metropolitan Opera broadcast, and classical music was part of the NORMAL daily radio fare. NBC broadcast live opera on Sunday afternoons. My grandparents were not in any way substantially different, I think I can say, from a large number of “regular” Americans who lived in the 1930s, ‘40’s, and ‘50s. Classical music was taken for granted as a PART of everyday life. It wa not consigned to elitist realms or niche programming. While most American would certainly not have been able to discuss the different versions of Mussorgsky’s BORIS, on the other hand quite a few would have been familiar, at least to some degree, with Kirsten Flagstad, Lauritz Melchior, Jussi Bjoerling, Lily Pons, and Marjorie Lawrence.

Mr. Stove makes the point that since 1945, and particulary, I would say, since the 1960s, government grants have played a significant role in what classical musicians produce. That it very true. Indeed, at least in the USA prior to the 1950w, it was generally up to wealthy private patrons and the public at large to support muisical endeavors. And in fact the public did so. The Met and important ensemble like the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony, for instance, suffered during the Depression, but they did have several things going for them: a large base of support among the general public, a widespread view that what they did and what they presented was significant for our culture, and a connection to that public, a connection that has become much more tenuous and less general, I would suggest, since the 1960s. 

Although I agree with Mr. Stove that Wagner is certainly not the culprit in the decline of serious/classical music, I do think E. Michael Jones is on to something when he highlights the 1960s, with its vast and radical cultural revolutions, as a watershed period in our history. The assumptions of my grandparents (and my parents) about the “goodness” of classical music, like other assumpitions, went by the wayside during the 1960s. And, add to this the alacrity among the commerical music producers and recorders to seize the (hoped for profitable) moment. Voice of Firestone could make a profit for the networks in the 1953, but, even if the company was willing to pay to keep it on the air in 1963 (which they were), grasping execs pushed the newer formats of rock-n’-roll. And the sense of “cultural responsibility” that had at least, in part, motivated earlier media moguls?  “Revolution” and “the profit motive” joined hands in a mutually agreeable
arrangement.

Meanwhile, serious music was, in effect, exiled by and large from mainstreet to “high street,” to the academy, to universities, to university” towns, over to PBS, government life support, with the accompanying bureaucratic control. Disconnected in many ways from a general public, no longer regarding it as an essential ingredient of our culture, increasingly it became the preserve of pedants, inaccessible martinets, and the like, or even a John Cage, who could write (1952) his magisterial work, “4’33” (four minutes & thirty-three seconds of
silence) for any Instrument,” to the admiring purrs of the critics!!  Talk about cultural disconnect!

Certainly all is not bleakness, however. I remain hopeful.

B says:

“ But the themes that inspired classical music are no more.  Can you imagine a piece called the “September Eleventh Overture”?”

No, but I can imagine Adams’ “On the Transmigration of Souls,” which is about the same event.

Or Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima,” which is as scary and visceral a piece as has ever been written.

So the themes are still out there - some of them anyway.

Nancarrow?
Partch?
Ligeti?
Xenakkis?
Scelsi?

What are these? Chopped liver?

Perhaps there is a silver lining in the economic storm clouds now bearing down upon us: if the government goes belly-up, we may be freed from government subsidies of the arts, and society may be forced, in its newly discovered poverty, to turn once again to the church and to the private sector for welfare, including patronage of the arts.

@ Edwin Reardon

Thank you for that listening recommendation.  I was able to find a recording of “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” through a file sharing network.  You’re right, it really is hair-raising.  I’d go so far as to say it’s borderline horrific.  But only if you listen to it at 1AM in the dark with your eyes closed. 

Alas, the theme of destruction will be eternally present.  But out of the ashes shall rise…

If you think that government funding has caused the death of music, what do you think that massive government funding is doing to scientific research?

I feel the need to point out an obvious ommission.  Wasn’t the Soviet Union a government?  Didn’t they fund composers and greatly influence their output?  These composers were forbidden to write 12 tone music.  This complicates the argument that government subsidies by themselves cause modernism.  So, were western governments awarding subsidies under the condition that they write music to impress other composers?

I don’t wish to expound on others’ earlier and insightful comments.  I have been a musician for 33 years and fancy myself a composer even going to college for music composition.  The one tendency I always had to fight was forcing musical evolution.  Something happens to the creative process when the composer becomes too self conscious and tries too hard to create progress rather than to create music. 

While I could spend all morning commenting, I’ll just leave it at that.

Written by a true philistine! High art has always depended on patronage. Whether it has been the government purse or sponsorship by a private donor, true art has always needed money other than that provided by the “market”. True, some contemporary music is atrocious, but not all. How about Messiaen, how about Shostakovich, who received money from the Sovyet state and was still able to write music of the highest calibre? As for 19th century music, it is the top of boredom. Between Beethoven and Stravinsky, there isn’t much to listen to, with the exception of Bruckner. And how about the Reneissance and the Baroque, Couperin, Scarlatti, Dowland et al.?

Wow!  Many learned comments here.  As a latecomer to classical, I can only say this: my ears tell me that the argument that no good classical music has been composed since ‘45 is correct. And no good music of ANY kind has been composed since about 1980.

Here is but a brief list of masterpieces that have been composed post 1945:

Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 10 through 15
Britten: War Requiem
Bernstein: Overture to Candide, West Side Story, Symphony No.2 The Age of Anxiety, Chichester Psalms
Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie

Here is a list of living composers whose works deserve serious consideration:

Arvo Pärt
John Corigliano
Henri Dutilleux
Henryk Górecki

The advent of atonality was a necessary and spontaneous development in the history of Western music.  It was not the result of some government grant, as is evidenced by Schoenberg’s dying in poverty.  The “emancipation of the dissonance” has contributed immensely to the deepening and enriching of tonality, as is evidenced by the works of all important twentieth-century composers, whether they chose to remain within the confines of more traditional sonorities or not.  The above names and works are but a small sampling of what I’m talking about.

You can gripe all you want about Cage and Schoenberg, and I can sympathize with the discontent brought about by intellectualism, but I have heard and enjoyed works by both composers, from within and without traditional harmonic structures.  Take a listen sometime to Cage’s works for prepared piano, or Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra.

Just because music may temporarily require more from your ear does not mean that the socialists are out to destroy your ability to hear and understand beauty.  Does anyone honestly believe that Stravinsky turned to serialism late in life due to governmental interference, or because he had been propogandized against his own oerves?  And speaking of Igor:

[T]he philistine audience who rebelled at the premiere of Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps had a legitimate beef.

Pardon me, sir, but The Rite of Spring is absolute perfection.  Even Ravel could hear it at the premiere.  I guess you would have walked out with Saint-Saëns, then?  Bon débarras!

I have been studying music history for several years now, and it seems like there are always times of ebb and flow, as well as total disgust of the ‘new’ music of the day. Also, we only know the music of the past which survived—surely there was more which ended up on the ash heap, just as much of today’s eventually will.  One teacher introduced us to the music of local (Fairbanks, Alaska) composer John Luther Adams.  He said we did not have to like his music, we just had to listen to it.  He writes very long, minimalist pieces which require a different listening style.  Not analytical.  Some of them I didn’t like.  But when we heard the world premiere of his piece “The Light that Fills the World” in our own fine concert hall, performed by our own very fine volunteer symphony, on a cold but bright early spring day at the end of our dark season, I felt exactly what he was saying.
Our teacher said that he would be one of the few composers of this time to be appreciated in the future.  Don’t know where his funding comes from, but he has said that his inspiration comes from the deep silence of the far north.

Thanks, Irene.  Now I have more to say, as if everyone isn’t tired of it already.

Many years ago, I hated Philip Glass.  I thought he was nothing more than a crackpot who established a gimmick and a following.  After seeing Koyaanisqatsi, I conceded that his music had its input into the ideas behind the film.  I now own numerous works by Glass, and I defy anyone to state that his soundtrack to Notes on a Scandal was anything other than pitch-perfect for the mood and manner of the film.

Therefore, in reference once again to the premiere of The Rite of Spring in 1913 Paris: is there anyone now living who thinks that this masterpiece would receive anything other than a warm and delighted welcome in the City of Lights?

A point which nobody has mentioned is that, back ca. the eighteenth century, the words artist, artisan, and mechanic had overlapping meanings.  The artist was a craftsman, not a spiritually superior demigod.  The Archbishop of Salzburg didn’t beg Mozart to take Mother Church’s filthy lucre and write what he wished with the assurance that the Church would be falling-down grateful for whatever Wolfie cooked up.  The complaint that Mozart’s new madd had too many notes in it was probably because the archbishop feared that the lumpencongregation wouldn’t be able to dig it enough to feel generous.  Bach then the royalty, nobility, etc. who commissioned art got what they wanted, not what the artist felt like at the time.

With the advent of insecure parvenu wealth the artists saw a chance to become bosses and not just hired help.  The patrons shouldn’t impose their pedestrian taste on those with superior gifts but should be thankful for whatever the artists chose to bestow upon their rich inferiors.  This doesn’t apply just to music; think of painting and architecture. 

The worst of it is that, since the human mind can rationalize anything, the victims have come to believe the hype.  If they can imagine that there really is something marvellous in a piece of rancid tripe, they will extoll it.  Sort of like the emperor’s new wardrobe.  Indeed some become painfully obvious snobs about it.  Classical music in the nineteenth century was the height of boredom with nothing worthwhile between Beethoven and Stravinsky except maybe Bruckner!?!  Oh please.  Bruckner is like someone sitting in a parked Ferrari with the transmission in neutral, blipping the throttle and going vroom-vroom-vroom.  Lots of energy and passion, but it doesn’t go anywhere.  So Brahms was just an inflated whorehouse pianist, and Dvorak a hick from Bohemia?  So artistically perceptive of you to enlighten us.  And maybe Ravel appreciated Sacre du Printemps, but he was a pro anc could really see into the mechanics.  But it wasn’t and isn’t perfect.  Nothing in this vale of tears is. 

Also I thought Bernstein’s West Side Story is just vulgar mass entertainment and not Fine Art like his serious stuff.  Maybe that’s what makes it understandable and satisfying.  Too bad Lenny had to give up what he was good at and go highbrow.

I believe that if we step back from classifying music as “classical” vs. all-the-rest-of-music then many difficulties are removed.  We should just acknowledge music as a creative art that has existed for a very long time and undergoes constant change.  Every generation has a number of people who are compelled to express themselves creatively through music, and in every generation some small set of these people does it very well, and with them lies the musical-historical moment.  In the 19th and early 20th century these music-creation experts tended to prefer expressing themselves via orchestras.  Then in the mid-20th century it seems the government and academia decided to extend the age of the orchestra artificially; music performed by an orchestra has a veneer of respectability and seriousness, and a bureaucrat providing a grant for such music would be taking less of a risk of backing the wrong kind of art.  But I believe that fine music-creation continues today, and it just has bypassed the genre that might be called “classical.” As an example, Radiohead’s album In Rainbows from last October is as fine as any composed music I have heard (and yes, I have heard tons of classical music; my undergraduate degree was in music history/theory).  Perhaps that was the latest moment in music history.

Partch, Ligeti, Scelsi, Xenakkis? Not chopped liver--Liverworst

(1) Late in life Stravinsky wrote, “Most people would rather talk about music than listen to it.” Little written above would suggest he was wrong. (2) Odd that, in the many paragraphs of diagnosis and navel-gazing above, no one thought it worth noting that at some point between 1965 and 1975 the teaching of music (i.e., what some call serious music and others call classical music) stopped in virtually all elementary schools--public, private, and Catholic (formerly it was widely given an hour every week or two, a not inappropriate allotment given the limited time available for instruction and the need of the young for time not spent enduring the miseries of the classroom). Limited instruction in music was replaced with the canonization of noise--rock, rap, and other forms of cultural poison. Is it really any wonder then that new audiences aren’t appearing from within the ranks of the young, even as our grand “cultural” institutions prostitute themselves on every proverbial street corner? Is it any wonder that music is now thought of so little and, when it is thought of, regarded as a matter of supreme insignificance by even the self-appointed young saviors of the Right (e.g., TW and various other budding careerists at LRC and elsewhere)? (3) Odd that no one mentioned (surely Dr. Cathey knows) that many of the composers now rightly considered great were not so regarded in their own time. Surely this is worth mentioning when people WILL insist on droning on yet again about the critical importance of pleasing the public (as offensive a canard, mutatis mutandis, as the Broken Windows theory is in economics). Lobkowitz, Kinsky, Rasumovsky, and those other princes, dukes, and counts who were residents of or resident in the Vienna of Beethoven’s time didn’t give him money and advancement because his music pleased the generality of men (albeit that generality was incomparably more cultivated than anything this parlous age could produce); they supported him because they were smart enough to see and hear that his music was new and different and profound, wealthy enough to support what they liked (even after mistresses and other vices were also properly funded), and convinced enough of the centrality of music and art to man’s moral life to recognize that the money they were spending was money well spent. God bless them all--and God bless those Parisian parvenus who bankrolled Stravinsky in the twenties, too! (4) A few points of orthography and fact: it’s Xenakis, not Xenakkis, and his music may appeal to few, but it is astonishing enough almost to gainsay Qoheleth. Dr. Cathey, do not blame NBC for giving up its support of the Met; it NEVER supported the Met; what it did do was far more remarkable: it had its own troupe, the NBC Opera Company, which gave live staged-in-studio performances on network television. One such was a now famous (i.e., famous to those few who still remember or care) production (1960) of Don Giovanni, with Cesare Siepi, Leontyne Price as Anna, and Birgit Nilsson as Elvira. Elvira was a role Nilsson seldom sang--especially in English (the libretto had been translated by Auden and Kallman, no less). Most of the other errors are not worth correcting, because those who made them are literally ignorant of the topic at hand (ignorance is not a fault, of course, except when it is not ’fessed up to). (5) This is the last thing, you’ll be glad to know. I share Mr. Stove’s respect for Richard Taruskin’s learning and scholarship--given their extent, it would be dishonest or foolish not to--but he must be read with caution. Like most of his academic colleagues, he is not averse to twisting truth to serve rhetorical and ideological ends. In his case one end is attacking the Cross, of which he has long been an enemy. If you think this the raving of a crank, pick up his books, look up his Times articles, and read for yourself.

Good points by mr. Heretz above.

Musical creativity and talent hasn’t gone away. It is
just that the variety of musical genres today,
gives the musically gifted the choice of where to
apply their talent. More often than not, this is
within popular or experimental music. Pop music also
offers a larger audience, money, fame and more appeal
with the opposite sex. Incidentally, all things the
classical composers enjoyed in their days.

On an off note, I mostly listen to radio during the
workday, as most people, and it is almost impossible
to properly take in a classical piece while you are
doing something else. Pop music is easier, as
it originates in music intended to give rhytm and
flow to your everyday work.

The level of discussion in reply to the article has been quite high, perhaps because serious music is a much more engrossing topic (even a more important topic?) than politics, sex, and religion (the three themes of Verdi’s operas). The fate of serious music is indicative of the fate of an entire culture. 

pclaudel is quite correct that the institution that’s supposed to elevate tastes—the statist schools (a.k.a. “public schools") has debased them since the 60s. The university, as we all know, shares in the blame.

PClaudel is quite correct about NBC; I was not quite clear enought in my earlier message. Indeed, they broadcast live opera over NBC television, and I can remember Giorgio Tozzi singing a BORIS, as well as the DON GIOVANNI he mentions. About the radio network, very true, it did not subvent Met broadcasts, but it did put htem on, and they reached an large public for the time.

And it is very true that some now famous composers died in poverty, and some had to struggle to make ends meet. Yet some others---think of Saverio Mercadante, Pacini, von Flotow, D.-F. Auber--whose works held the stage consistently in the 19th, even early 20th centuries, but now are only occasionally revived.

About the support of the Eszterhazys, Lichnowkys, Waldsteins, and others, yes, indeed, those patrons had the vision to recognize in large part that they had genuises before them. But they were also arguably more “connected” to the traditions of Western and Christian culture than the “patrons” of today, immeasurably more educated and refined, generally, I would suggest. More, the impresarios at San Carlo in Naples, or the Hofoper in Vienna, wanted crowd-pleasers, and they got as much with Rossini, Donizetti, and later Verdi (despite early miscues), just as l’Opewra in Paris (and the opera comique) swallowed whole the works of Auber, Halevy, Meyerbeer, Gounod, and Thomas. LA MUETTE DI PORTICI (Auber), it is said, with its partiotic choruses, helped initiate a revolution in what was to become Belgium in 1830, and a fifty thousand “common folk” accompanied Verdi’s funeral proceession in Milan at the beginning of the 20th century. Genuises like Verdi and Wanger may have been “above it all” and “avant-garde,” but they also had the God-given gift of being able to please the public, as well as the monarch.

I wonder how many “common folks"--average people--would make an effort to see a performance of Xenakis’ BOHOR II? Actually, I did once, with tin cans resounding in my ears for days afterwards. I certainly wouldn’t deny that the work was inventive or original...but where’s the link, the connection,to the traditions of great music produced by our Western, Christian civilization? Where is the genius? On the other hand, I’ve heard works by the Swiss composer Sutermeister, by Bohuslav Martinu, and by Prokofieff, and Shostakovich, which do, in my humble opinion, carry on those traditions.

The other question I asked, however, remains. Since the 1960s our whole commercial response has been away from “serious” or classical music, which is generally confined to specific niche audiences. Here in the Raleigh area we have a totally “free enterprize” classical radio station, WCPE, supported entirely by individual (and some corporate) donations. Such is a rarity, but consider that this area is the home of four large universities (including Duke and UNC) and the Research Triangle, with more Ph.D.s per capita than any place except Silicon Valley. One wonders if it could be done in, say, another city of comprabalbe size. Perhaps, perhaps not. And WCPE, while featuring the MET and the Cleveland Orchestra concerts, mostly shies away from contemporary works; it’s top ten list always includes Beethoven’s 9th, the 1812 Overture, and the regular “chestnuts” that please.  I certainly understand this, although I’m glad to see the occasional work by Prokofieff, Bruckner, Samuel Barber, and Paul Creston intermixed. Still, if listening to FINLANDIA might inspire someone to sample some of Sibelius’ symphonies, or maybe even Willem Stenhammer or Avro Part, then that’s great.

WCPE has done a good job in merchandizing itself and its music, and is carried now by dozens of other stations in the US, on the web, and via satellite TV.  It would great if its success could be repeated elsewhere.

I myself am a proponent of “difficult” twentieth-century music, but I don’t expect any comments here to “convert” the “opponents” of that music.  For a number of reasons, I find it hard to swallow that government subsidy led to the current state of classical music.

But, for argument’s sake, let’s say that government subsidy did permit or promote the composition of “difficult” “atonal” music which is not of much use to the general public.  Let us note, however, that Stockhausen’s music was very useful to the Beatles, Miles Davis, the Grateful Dead, and Bjork, all of whom enjoy significant popularity.  Stephen Sondheim studied under Milton Babbitt (an Ivy-League atonalist), and Sondheim’s musical “Sweeney Todd” has become a popular film.  So, at least some of this difficult music has, indirectly, been useful to the general public.

I agree that the role of the taxpayer as patron of first resort is not helpful to the creation of great music. How many newly commissioned works are played once to an unsuspecting audience, never to be repeated? Of course they will get a respectful and ‘insightful’ review in the Broadsheets as a consolation prize. 

However I believe there are other factors which have an important part to play.

Firstly, the concoction of twelve tone technique as a legitimate musical form to replace the tonal musical form. An advantage of this compositional method is that it enables mediocrity as exemplified by Schoenberg to ‘compete’ in the same game, that of great composer as exemplified by Beethoven. The difficulty with it is that the human brain finds the sound of it incoherent ie not music.  At some point people will simply give up pretending that they enjoy this stuff and that will be the end of that.

And when I referred to “pretending”, of course, we are right in “The Emperor’s new clothes” territory, hence the ‘performance’ of a work called 4’33” which may or may not be atonal, but is about the extraneous sounds which are normally hidden by an orchestra’s playing. It’s lack of overt cacophony probably explains it’s popularity. 

There is also the myth of the inevitability or even the desirability of progress, not only in music but in the arts generally. Creative people of the arts believe they can and should develop new forms in much the same way that scientists and technologists create new forms rendering prior conceptions obsolete and incomplete. And of course the faster the scientific world advances the more creative artists try to keep up often using the new tools developed through scientific endeavour. But this is not how great art is produced: Beethoven produced many of the greatest of all works of music, not by trying to distance himself from Haydn, but simply by trying to express his personal creative vision. 

I said “simply” with irony because it leads to the next issue, namely the democratisation of ‘genius’. This is the evolution of techniques which enable artistic forms to be taught and practiced by mediocrities thereby not only greatly increasing the participants but also ensuring that great talent goes unrecognised. Such as twelve tone technique, but also even more bizarre methodologies which have ‘graced’ the latter half of the twentieth century and on. And then again there have been attempts at rapprochement often by use of primitive forms. There are parallels to all this in visual art where Conceptualism achieves the same, so for that matter, with string theory in physics where practitioners no longer need to be able to visualise the increasingly unreal world or worlds that their equations have formulated.

The truth is that great creative ability is very rare and unless the fortunate few are provided with a coherent launch platform for their talent instead of being inhibited and sidetracked by inappropriate methodologies they will not produce anything worthwhile and classical music will remain stuck in a rut with the larger audience ignoring ‘modern’ music, a few enthusiasts trying to extract sustenance from the slight manifestations of coherence and creativity and the rest of the world assuming classical music has died and been replaced by the ‘Beetles’ and Andrew Lloyd Webber and that would be a shame.

(Sorry to be dogmatic on 12-tone, but having listened to some pieces repeatedly until they had become totally familiar, they still did not strike me as coherent or meaningful, but above all they were not enjoyable to listen to).

The essay and the comments are a rare treat.  Two things nobody has mentioned yet.  My parents’ generation grew up with radio in the home, my grandparents’, however modest their means, with pianos, around which folks would sing.  Then too, in the New York area in the Sixties there were about five FM stations with “classical” music pretty much all the time, today… never mind.

Firstly, the concoction of twelve tone technique as a legitimate musical form to replace the tonal musical form… enables mediocrity as exemplified by Schoenberg to ‘compete’ in the same game, that of great composer as exemplified by Beethoven.  The difficulty with it is that the human brain finds the sound of it incoherent ie not music.

I agree that musical rules should be based on what sounds correct to the ear, not what is correct on paper, but I strongly disagree that Schoenberg was inferior to Beethoven.  I’m bored with a lot of his twelve tone music myself, but listen to Verklärte Nacht sometime and tell me that that was a man who didn’t know what he was doing.  If a composer starts off with a theme, a form, a genre, a harmonic progression, or a twelve tone row, then works outward toward beauty, I have no problem with that.  The problem with the twelve tone row is that it’s based on paper first, not on tried-and-true methods like genre, form, and theme.

There is also the myth of the inevitability or even the desirability of progress, not only in music but in the arts generally… But this is not how great art is produced: Beethoven produced many of the greatest of all works of music, not by trying to distance himself from Haydn, but simply by trying to express his personal creative vision.

...through instigating progression and transformation not only of musical forms and genre, but also increasing the size of the orchestra, and demanding pianos with greater ranges and durability, as well as modifications to other instruments.  Notice the difference between early music ensembles and the modern orchestra.  You can thank Beethoven for making demands on the science and technology behind musical instruments, the pushing of musical genres and forms to new heights, as well as every single great and terrible artist after him making demands on the audience instead of vice versa.  This is no myth, and progression in musical genres, forms, and styles is most certainly inevitable, even spontaneous.

The truth is that great creative ability is very rare and unless the fortunate few are provided with a coherent launch platform for their talent instead of being inhibited and sidetracked by inappropriate methodologies they will not produce anything worthwhile...

You can thank public schooling for this.  Read John Taylor Gatto.  Governmental interference in human affairs is the real issue, not atonal music.

I don’t think all the blame should be laid at the feet of the public school system, which by its nature is not set up to teach music intensively.  An hour per week of ‘music appreciation’ is not going to ferret out the next creative musical genius.  I just did an in-depth study of the young Beethoven.  Not only were most of the classical masters born into musical families, they were immersed (and I mean immersed) in the music of their day from a very early age.  Playing the organ for 6am service, singing in the boy’s choir, studying other instruments, taking classes in composition and theory, etc. etc.  Very few of them (Mozart and especially
Saent Saens) were full blown musical prodigies at age seven.
Our culture does not provide this type of opportunity.  Also, music of necessity was performed live back then.  And more people did it at some level—singing, playing folk instruments, etc.  It was for enjoyment, bonding and relaxation.  Now we passively hear polished performances on recordings. But we don’t actively participate.  Witness the thousands of American Idol wannabees.  They hear their favorite singer and think “I can do that too”.  A few can. A few are hopelessly tone deaf.  But many have tolerable voices, they have just never had the opportunity to learn how to sing and they don’t realize it takes time and effort. Our entire culture is amusical in many ways.  We should have hand drumming groups in middle schools, steel drum groups in high schools, and a fully integrated Orff Schulwerk curriculum in elementary schools.  That would be a start.

The reason I urge people to read John Taylor Gatto is so that they can understand that the public school system is not designed to better the children who attend.  It is meant to keep them in their place.  If you want steel drums, hand drums, or any other kind of drum in the schools, even if it’s a cloth held tight over a pan with a rubber band, it is the same.  I was exposed to music in the schools as well as at home, but it is very hard to recapture what was really never known.  There is no comparison to Mozart and Beethoven, men who were taught by means other than a processed, homogenizing, deliberately dumbed-down system.  With the type of parents I had, if I had been home-schooled, I would have been completely immersed in music, and would probably be that much more adept.  Who knows?  I might have been the next Mozart!  ;)

Liberty cannot be taught in public schools.  The nature of forced schooling on the populace through taxation and truancy laws forbids liberty.  The system will never teach anything other than allegiance to the state, and whatever whims the prevailing elite dictate at the time, in the manner of inculcating sameness above all other virtues.  Whether it’s music, science, or multi-culti nonsense, this is what public schooling is about: sameness and obedience.  There will be the occasional genius who emerges, but for the most part you can kiss the Mozarts and Beethovens of the world goodbye through this highly oppressive system.

I don’t lay all the blame at the feet of the public school system, but at the feet of the government, one of whose many cancerous outgrowths is public schooling.  R.J. Stove is right to say that government subsidies have gone a long way towards the “unattractiveness” of modern art.  But I hold that atonality in music was an outgrowth of natural musical progressions, and a necessary one.  Perhaps there would have been less of it with less governmental interference, but then everything government touches, it destroys.  If government-subsidized art looks dead, it is because the government killed it.  You can’t separate the public schools from that.

The real problem with the ‘public’ schools is that they are not really public—we pay for them, but can only access them on authoritarian terms.  My kids didn’t go (their choice) until middle school.  I wasn’t into music back then, so they didn’t get too much exposure (I was still subconsciously healing from my own early music lessons), but they did get a very thorough classical ballet education.  I must say that our school district offers a much better high school education than I got in the early 1970’s. My recipe for schools would be something like this—the early grades are optional, and there is the equivalent of a one-room schoolhouse on just about every corner.  Hours are flexible and parental involvement is welcome.  ‘Middle school’ would be the equivalent of about fifth through eighth or ninth grades.  Then kids would have the option of further academia, specialization in music, etc. or apprenticeship to a trade.

Oh, and by the way, when we glorify the classical composers, don’t forget most of us totally would not want to live in those eras.  Imagine the state of dentistry, etc.  Perhaps that kind of music cannot be realized in our current world—they understood all too well the dichotomy between what they were writing and the lives they were living.  I hope that the next wave of artists is (finally) women who are no longer subjugated to producing “the next Mozart” or whoever.

Here’s a sample of 12-tone that will make y’all realize how wonderful it * really* is…
http://www.therestisnoise.com/files/twelvetonemastscommercial.mp3

I couldn’t disagree more with B’s comment that a Requiem just won’t cut it.  In my opinion, Mozart’s Requiem, especially his Dies Irae, as well as Faure’s, are the most inspired and inspiring music ever written.  I can listen to them every day and never tire of their magnificent musical adornment of the pinnacle of Catholic doctrine: life or death after our final judgment.  If, instead of three books, I had to grab only 2 CDs before the world is destroyed, it’d be those two.  And I wouldn’t need three books, either.  The Book of Kells would suffice.

I am grateful for Dr. Cathey’s comments. I had not meant to suggest that all great composers were unpopular in their day nor that I considered unpopularity a proof of, shall we say, artistic “authenticity.” In addition to the examples he cites, with all of which I agree, I cite a few more: Brahms was popular--indeed, he was the archetypal establishment figure--and posterity feels as warmly about him as his contemporaries did (though Schoenberg, who loved his music deeply, understood its original qualities far better than many a typical admirer, past or present); Haydn, too, of course, as well as the great master of the lute song, John Dowland, who either resented his fame or feigned resentment brilliantly. The point I was insufficiently clear-spoken to make was that it takes but little reflection to see that the power of music is unrelated to the number of people who feel that power. There is no use denying that one salient characteristic of the products of the human imagination is their lack of durability--it’s remarkable that so much from Greco-Roman times has survived, and yet who doubts that almost everything has perished?--hence, the likelihood that a composer who doesn’t make a hit with a statistically sizable segment of tastemakers within a few decades of his death will ever find an audience is small to nil. But equating the voice of the people with the voice of God was, I thought, sooooo last week.

I think Irene Wood misses the point of education. There is a tired old joke about an American tourist who takes the tour of one of England’s stately country homes and on the way out collars the lord of the manor, who has been careless enough to let himself be seen. “Nice lawn you got here; how do you get a lawn like this?” The lord replies, “You plant good seed, wait for the grass to appear, and then roll it every day for seven hundred years.” Even the best generalist education does no more than plant seeds, but unless good seed is planted, nothing worthwhile will ever grow--no matter how what the quality of the dentistry.

That last bit should have read, “no matter how _high_ the quality of the dentistry.” Sorry.

I, for one, have enjoyed greatly reading all the comments in this thread. All of the commentary, without exception, has been thoughtful and thought-provoking. I am copying this thread to a file for future glance-backs. I appreciate Taki opening this site to R. J. Stove and his initial article. Such cultural and artistic concerns should be central to those of us on the Right.

What a revisionism of the History !!!

Art has always been the product of the most undemocratic process, which is that a king or a prince is reallocating the ressources of his people to please his own pleasure. And the best art has been the product of this reallocation, when the prince was “well educated” (Louis XIV with Lully and the invention of the orchestra, Estherazy and Haydn, Beethoven and his sponsors, Nero, China, etc...).

The crisis of the 20th century, particularly in a non-subsidies culture like the US, is to believe that art is for everyone, and everyone is able to express his taste and influence what is a culture and a civilisation. This is what Adorno calls the “cultural industries”, when people begin to think that Britney Spears is more important than Ligeti because she makes more money and she is more known....

Yes, art is for everyone, on contrary to wealth, it means everyone can afford it, when enough courage and preparation (particularly in European subsided culture countries, where culture is not expensive, and when children can go early with their teachers to intelligent theater, to concerts, etc...). But it doesn’t mean that everybody’s taste makes a great culture, what David Hume already called in the XVII century an “educated person”.

So in the XX century, unfortunately, since decisions are much more democratic (everyone), or at least capitalist (the freedom of the taste is just fake, in fact), you need a counter-power to encourage what is not so easy on the first eye for everybody, to support education, culture, etc..

The problem in the XX century is not that nobody is listening to Ligeti. It is more that nobody is listening to Beethoven ! (or things Beethoven is just great strings).

This sort of “essay” above is just very dramatic since, behind such “fake-democratic liberalism”, this is all the principles of the enlighment that you are contesting (education, improving the thoughts, etc..).

Taxpayer funding is never “unlimited.” It’s appropriation may be as capricious as any private art patronage, but public money for the arts is still really hard to come by. You mistake the source of funding with the impact of scholarship and press about said art after the fact.

Classical music was self-destructing long before 1945. Bartok, Webern, Schoenberg, Varese, Hindemith, Scriabin, all were cranking out “masterpieces” of atonality long before. As in art and architecture, the repudiation of traditional beauty had little to do with state subsidies and a great deal to do with avant-garde fashion.

“Bartok, Webern, Schoenberg, Varese, Hindemith, Scriabin, all were cranking out “masterpieces” of atonality long before. As in art and architecture, the repudiation of traditional beauty had little to do with state subsidies and a great deal to do with avant-garde fashion.”

Perhaps, but personal tastes matter as well. You just named several of my favorite composers, and the fact that their music is still being played long after their deaths is a strong point in their favor. Or do you think we’d be better off if they just spent their careers imitating Mozart & Brahms?